


Blues Music

by alternatealto



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Season/Series 07, Sick!Wilson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 16:37:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1517606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alternatealto/pseuds/alternatealto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wilson, searching for House in yet another bar, finds first trouble, and then answers he doesn't expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blues Music

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2011 for the Camp Sick!Wilson Random Items Challenge. Items were fog, an Ikea catalogue, and an oboe.

**Blues Music**  
  


It was a night in late spring in a port city, and fog was rolling in off the ocean, thickly grey-white, wisping along the streets and draping itself over buildings and cars, muffling sounds and obscuring vision.  Tiny droplets of moisture clung to windows and  trickled sluggishly down walls, and heavy, cottony swirls of mist parted sullenly before cars and pedestrians and then closed silently behind them. 

Foggy nights were good nights if you were in a certain line of business, especially in this part of town, and the two men hurrying out of a narrow alley had just finished a rather profitable transaction.  The enveloping fog swallowed up their footsteps and the coarse joke one of them made to the other, and then they were gone and the alley was empty. 

Or perhaps not quite.  After a few moments there was a muffled scuffling sound, and a noise that might have been a moan.  The fog sent a few tendrils questing down the alleyway, past the rancid trash cans and the gutters sending slow trickles across the concrete.  A man lay sprawled face-down on the pavement, his legs twitching slightly.  After a moment he made the moaning sound again, a little more loudly. 

A small breeze skittered through the alleyway, picking up the smells of rancid coffee grounds and rotten meat and riffling idly through the pages of someone’s abandoned Ikea catalog.  The mist gathered itself together again.  If wind wanted this place, the fog would have to move on.  It left the alleyway behind, and the breeze blew a little more strongly, rattling the trash cans and making the loose catalog pages flap.   

The man sighed and clutched his head, then slowly sat up, looking around at the darkness and the retreating fog. He shook his head as if to clear it, then winced painfully and groaned.  Gradually, he worked his way to his feet and stood with one hand braced against a brick wall for a moment before taking a few hesitant steps. 

A door opened, sending a sudden bright slash of light across the alleyway, accompanied by a muffled burst of mixed laughter, conversation, and music.  “ – be right back,” the young woman who’d opened the door called over her shoulder, “I just need a smoke, okay?” 

She left the door open behind her, and the man automatically raised a hand to shield his eyes from the light.  The brief motion caught the woman’s attention, she stiffened suspiciously for a moment, then stepped forward.   

“Hey!  What’re you doin’ here?  You can’t come in this door, you need to go around front.”  Then she got a better look at him as he took a few wavering steps toward the doorway, and gasped.  “Oh, my god!  Are you – were you  _mugged?_ Come on, get in here now, they might be coming back.”  She pointed to the door, then moved to support him when it was obvious he was having trouble staying upright on his own. He leaned on her heavily as she guided him through the doorway and into the back of the club. 

“Ket!  Jules!  Gimme a hand with this guy, I think he got mugged in the alley out back!”  
 

* * * * *

Stupid. 

Stupid, stupid,  _stupid_. 

Sitting on a chair, Wilson held a small bag of ice cubes to the knot on his head and winced as he took stock of his situation.  He’d managed to convince his rescuers that he didn’t need paramedics.  (“No, really.  I’m a doctor.  I’m not having blurred or double vision, nausea, or any other signs of concussion.  I’ll be fine.”)   He didn’t think he’d been unconscious for more than a few minutes, although it was hard to tell since his watch was gone. 

His wallet, naturally, was also gone.  Luckily, nothing of importance had been in it except cash.  His driver’s license and credit cards had been in a pouch strapped just below his left knee, along with his car key and a key to the loft:  a trick he had learned years ago from House.  Muggers, House had pointed out, were opportunists who usually didn’t have a lot of time, so they only looked in the obvious places.  The trick was to keep your important stuff where it wasn’t obvious, while letting them find enough that they wouldn’t feel the need to come back and check for more.   

So Wilson was out a couple of hundred bucks and a watch he’d bought at a mall kiosk two years ago, but at least he didn’t have to get the police involved.  He was sitting on a battered chair in the back room of a small club near the port in Elizabeth, his head hurt like hell, and he still had no idea where House was. 

He was starting to admit to himself that he might never know.   

And that wandering around late at night in dubious parts of New Jersey cities he wasn’t familiar with was a dumb idea, at best.   

Stupid. 

“Here.”  Josey, the girl who’d helped him into the club was holding out a glass.  “It’s just Coke,” she told him, when he looked at it questioningly,  “I know you’re not supposed to have alcohol when you’ve been hit on the head.”   

Wilson smiled and took the glass.  “Thanks,” he said, sipping at it gratefully.  He noticed that the noise from the other room was lessening, and realized the club must be closing down for the night.  
  
Josey smiled at him.  She was somewhere in her mid-twenties, with warm, medium-brown skin and long, frizzy hair pulled into a springy pony tail.  “So, what were you doing out in the alley?” she asked.  “I mean, you don’t look like the type to hang out in places like that.”   

“I was looking for the club,” he explained.  “Uh . . . this is Club J, isn’t it?”  Josey nodded and Wilson went on, “The address is on Park, but there’s no door there.” 

“Yeah, the door’s over on 5th,” Josey said.  “I guess you walked around the wrong corner, is all.  But it’s kinda late, even for us.  I mean, we’re gettin’ ready to close.” 

“I’m  looking for a friend,” Wilson said.  “If . . . if he’s here, he’d probably stay until the place closed.  He’s tall, dark hair, limps and uses a cane.  He loves blues and jazz, and one of the club reviews mentioned you’ve got someone playing jazz oboe this weekend.  I thought he might try to get here.” 

“Does he ride a motorcycle?” Josey asked.    

Wilson’s heart sped up.  “Yes!  A – a Repsol!” 

“That’s Doc.  Yeah, he’s been here before, but not tonight.  I ain’t seen Doc in  . . . probably about six months?  Hey, Ket – when was the last time you saw Doc?  This guy’s lookin’ for him.” 

Wilson’s heart sank again.  Ket, a lanky red-haired  black man in his late 30s, glanced over from where he was strumming a guitar quietly in a corner.  “Back around Christmas, when Darius was playin’.  Remember?” 

 _That long ago.  Damn._ “Thanks,” Wilson told them both.  “It was a long shot anyway.”   Tiredly, he started running down a mental list of other clubs he could try.  He was getting farther and farther away from Princeton every weekend, now.  But at least this was a place House  _had_  been in, even if not recently.

“Hey,” Ket said, “is Doc, like, okay?  ’Cause he’s . . . cool, you know?  Last time he was here he did a set with Darius, and they, like,  _owned_  this place, y’know?  Jules wanted to have him come play regular, but Doc said he already had a job.” 

“Yeah,” Wilson said.  “He did.”

“Sounds like you mean he don’t have one now, man.”  To Wilson’s surprise, Ket sounded concerned.  Josey, too, was wearing a worried expression.   As if . . .   _maybe House came here more often than other places.  Hmm._

“I . . . well, it’s hard to say,” Wilson told them.  “He did something . . . that, uh, upset his boss.  A lot.  And then he left without telling anyone where he was going.” 

“Sounds like Doc,” Josey remarked.  “The not telling anyone, I mean.  So what’d he do that made his boss so mad, anyway?” 

“He lost his temper,” Wilson said briefly, “and did a lot of damage.”  He wasn’t about to relate the entire sordid story.  Luckily for House, Cuddy had dropped the legal charges against him, unwilling to turn her own and her daughter’s lives into a three-ring media circus – but her refusal to let House ever set foot in PPTH again still stood. 

Ket shook his head sadly.  “That’s bad.  So he what, like, broke up some stuff?” Wilson nodded.  “An’ now his boss don’t want him back. Damn.  Hey, Jules!” he called to a muscular man with curly dark hair and a mustache who had come to stand in the doorway, “Guy here says Doc lost his job.” 

“That is bad to hear,” Jules replied, coming into the room with a frown.  He had a very slight French accent.  “Bad for Doc, because I think he was a man who loved his work?”  He tilted his head and looked at Wilson inquiringly.   

“Yes,” Wilson said, finding himself a little . . . uneasy at the way the people here seemed to know his friend.  “Hou – um, Doc, could be very . . . passionate about what he did.”   _And about other things, too.  Dammit, House, where are you?_ 

“That, you could hear in his music,” Jules remarked.  “When he played here, that night with Darius – if only there had been someone to record.  It was . . .”  his voice trailed off.  “He has a gift, your friend Doc.  The true gift of the blues.  When you find him again, you will tell him for me that for a man with such music in him, there will be work.  Always.” 

“Thank you,” Wilson said, moved.  “I . . . thank you.  Yes.  I’ll tell him.” 

“Good,” Jules said.  He took a step closer to Wilson.  “And . . . if you will forgive me . . . may I give you advice?  Doc, I think, will return when he is ready.  He is himself like the music he loves so much, he must . . . he must  _feel_  it is time.  But he will return, I am sure of this.  And he would not want you to keep endangering yourself, looking for him.” 

“I’m not sure he’d care,” Wilson said, startled into bitterness. 

“Ah.  No.  I tell you, a man with so much music in his soul, he will care.”  His dark grey eyes held Wilson’s for a long moment.  “He will care,” Jules repeated.  “But he will always have his own way to show it.  He is a man to whom you must listen . . . differently.”  He stepped back, then, gesturing Wilson toward the door.  “And now Ket will walk with you to your car, so that you don’t get lost in the fog again, and we can close this club for the night.  You will not forget my message to Doc when you see him again?” 

“I’ll remember,” Wilson said.   
 

* * * * *

 There was less fog outside than there had been.  Wilson, driving away, watched in the rear-view mirror as the building vanished into the mist, then set his gaze on the road ahead.  It would be a long drive back.     
  
Somehow, he knew now that he wouldn't be searching for House in any more bars.  Jules was right -- House would come back when he felt like it.  
  
He turned on the radio and hunted over the dial, smiling a little when he found the right station and the car was suddenly filled with blues music and memories.  
  
  
 

 


End file.
